About

Who We Are

The best way to introduce you to our church is to tell you about the church in Antioch (Acts 11-13) and highlight four of its characteristics that we strive to imitate. (A full brochure of our church is available here in PDF)

1. Evangelism (Acts 11:20-21) – People were saved in Antioch, not through professionals or programs, but through the faithfulness of ordinary believers. Grace Fellowship is a church where everyone shares the task of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ among their friends, family, and co-workers.
2. Training (Acts 11:26) – Jesus said, “Make disciples…teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20). The church of Antioch did such a good job of teaching their members those things, their unbelieving friends wondered at their changed lives, and called them Christ-ians or Christ-followers. Like the church of Antioch, Grace Fellowship is a place where believers are trained through the teaching of the Word of God: all that Christ commanded us about doctrine and practice.
3. Serving (Acts 11:29) – The Antioch church was a church of servers, not sitters. At Grace Fellowship, we want to be a church of servers—Christians who joyfully and sacrificially contribute to the cement-hauling and bricklaying spiritual tasks of building the church of Jesus Christ.
4. Missions (Acts 13:2-3) – The church of Antioch was concerned with more than just strengthening their own church. Therefore, they sent out two of their elders, Paul and Barnabas, as church planters. In the same way, at Grace Fellowship we have dedicated ourselves to planting and strengthening Bible-teaching churches in Southern Africa.
  There are many great churches in the New Testament, however, the Antioch church in Acts 11-13 retains a special place in our hearts. We love its evangelism, training, serving and missions, and we have made those things our commitments at Grace Fellowship.

What We Believe and Teach

Our full Doctrinal Statement can be downloaded here.

How We Function

Our Church Constitution can be downloaded here.

Leadership

Joel James – Elder, Pastor-Teacher

Joel has been the pastor-teacher of Grace Fellowship since February 1995. Joel grew up in the north-central United States in a family with believing parents and professed faith in Christ at a young age. After graduating from varsity, Joel attended The Master´s Seminary at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California. Joel completed his studies in May 1994 and spent the next eight months serving as an intern in the outreach department at Grace Community Church. During that time, he was ordained and visited South Africa with his wife, Ruty. During that visit, the leaders of Grace Fellowship invited Joel to be their pastor. Joel and Ruty accepted the call and moved to Pretoria in February 1995. Both their children, Rebeqah and Daniel, were born in South Africa. In 2010, Joel was awarded a Doctorate in Ministry from The Master´s Seminary. His doctoral work focused on teaching pastors how to prepare expository sermons.

Ernst Kohlmeyer — Elder

Ernst started attending Grace Fellowship in 2010. He is married to Karin, and they have three children: Joshua, Benjamin and Jemima. He was nominated to serve as a deacon in 2014 and has served as an elder since August 2015. He has been working as an engineer in the automotive industry since 1998.

Steve Colin — Associate Pastor / Elder

Stephen started his role as associate pastor at Grace Fellowship on September 1st, 2019. After four years of ministry in Port Elizabeth, he decided to move with his family to Kansas City to attend the Expositors Seminary. Two years into his training, he was called to join the Grace Fellowship family in Pretoria. He is married to Lauren, and they have three children: Levi, Luke and Eleanor.

Eugen Olsen — Elder

Eugen has been part of Grace Fellowship since 2010. Eugen is married to Ronel, and they have four children: Chloe, Phebe, Katie and Calvin. He works in visual effects and is currently studying for pastoral ministry at Shepherd’s Seminary Africa.

Deacons

Jaco Mostert

Jaco joined Grace Fellowship in 2012. Jaco is married to Louise, and they have two sons, Marnus and Wian. Jaco is a physicist and works for the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation. Jaco is responsible for nuclear safety at the Safari reactor in Pelindaba.

Philip Marais

Philip joined Grace Fellowship in 2009. Philip is married to Linda, and they have two daughters, Carla and Lindi. Philip works for Eskom and is a Demand Analyst responsible for Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

Jaco Leuschner

Jaco started attending Grace Fellowship in 2017. Jaco is married to Eunice, and they have two daughters, Sophia and Sintiché. Jaco works in software engineering within the defence industry.

Victor Muller

Victor is married to Lize, and they began attending services at Grace Fellowship Pretoria in May 2013. He works as an analyst in Corporate Information and related Technologies.

JD Buys

History

In 1992, Dr John MacArthur of Grace Community Church, Los Angeles, toured South Africa, preaching in a number of different cities. At that time, various people approached Dr MacArthur and expressed interest in starting Bible-teaching churches in their own communities. In 1993, Grace Church sent a church-planter to assist these people. With his help, Grace Fellowship Pretoria began holding services in September 1993, with seven people attending the first service. By July 1994, Grace Fellowship had grown to an attendance of about twenty-five. At that time, the church called Joel James, a graduate of The Master´s Seminary and intern at Grace Community Church, to be their pastor-teacher. Joel assumed the preaching and shepherding duties of Grace Fellowship in February 1995. The past decade has seen Grace Fellowship’s attendance grow to about 200 on Sunday mornings. After many years of meeting in various school halls, Grace Fellowship moved into their own building in November, 2005.

Through God’s gracious enablement, Grace Fellowship has planted two churches (one in Sasolburg, and one in downtown Pretoria) and are currently running various training programs to strengthen local churches across the country and continent.